Ableton Forum

Would like to experiment a bit with arabic scales (with quartertones)

Anyone aware of any good plugins or sample libraries/sample players that have a nice implementation? I am not sure which samplers can do this kind of stuff. Kontakt?

I have got some Oud samples etc, but al at western scales. I am mainly interested in the different modal variations, so that does not help.

I have sampler license, with L6 but implementing this would be hard work probably.
I am willing to spend some money but not above a few 100 US$.

get off your lazy butt and write it in

here's a link
http://jguitar.com/scalelisting?scale=Arabian

Jeroen is asking about microtonality here, darkcatt. Nowhere near the same thing.

yep, like machinate says.

oh, to partially answer your q, J:

Most of the "high-end" Native Instruments stuff supports microtonal schemes, but I don't know what you would need to actually edit them? At any rate I'd suggest getting a system such as Reaktor to allow you to play at absolute frequencies. Right nopw, and probably the last decade or so, MaxMSP has been the microtonal composers system of choice, from what I gather.

Kontakt has a build in script to edit samples with microtonal tuning. Very easy to use, after some tests .....I actually like it better than sampler to be honest. I would not have bought sampler after my short experience with Kontakt now. I do not own Reaktor and think I will wait till the new partnership with 77's max/msp is clear before diving into Reaktor

Jeroen wrote:Would like to experiment a bit with arabic scales (with quartertones)

Anyone aware of any good plugins or sample libraries/sample players that have a nice implementation? I am not sure which samplers can do this kind of stuff. Kontakt?

I have got some Oud samples etc, but al at western scales. I am mainly interested in the different modal variations, so that does not help.

I have sampler license, with L6 but implementing this would be hard work probably.
I am willing to spend some money but not above a few 100 US$.

Good plan, and an idea: Why not get together with musicians and record them play this stuff?

Interesting sidenote...

I'm currently working on a big write-up about Abletons Meta Files.
I noticed that Ralf and Robert mentioned you could set the basekey with a few different options.

- BaseNote xx

- BaseFreq xxx.x

The "BaseNote" option accepts float values.

So long story short: It is possible to generate microtonal tuned waveforms for the sampler.

It probably doesn't contribute much to this topic, but i only just realized this fact and this thread seemed suitable to warm up for the article i'm writing on this

Checkout the "Carnatic Melakarta".

It's an Indian scale system. A grid of 42 scales.

You take a lower tetra-chord (4 notes), combine it with an upper tetra-chord
and you have a new scale.

hmmm having trouble finding it on google as well explained as this piece
of paper I have here somewhere..... I'll try to find it and scan it.

-Ben

son of a bitch.......what an excellent discussion......

Look, I've had too much JD to get into it in detail, but carry on.......this shit intrigues me heavily.........

MrYellow wrote:Checkout the "Carnatic Melakarta".

It's an Indian scale system. A grid of 42 scales.

You take a lower tetra-chord (4 notes), combine it with an upper tetra-chord
and you have a new scale.

hmmm having trouble finding it on google as well explained as this piece
of paper I have here somewhere..... I'll try to find it and scan it.

-Ben

...but that still won't give you microtonality, will it?

Machinate wrote:

MrYellow wrote:Checkout the "Carnatic Melakarta".

It's an Indian scale system. A grid of 42 scales.

You take a lower tetra-chord (4 notes), combine it with an upper tetra-chord
and you have a new scale.

hmmm having trouble finding it on google as well explained as this piece
of paper I have here somewhere..... I'll try to find it and scan it.

-Ben

...but that still won't give you microtonality, will it?

M, you are going to have to explain what that means........I'm seriously interested.......

Microtonality, as seen from a western stand-point at least, refers to the space "in-between the keys of traditional piano tuning", eg. quarter-note scales, or scales based on absolute frequencies.

scala is the program i always hear about regarding microtonality, here's the link

http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/

plenty of VSTs can import scala files

sweeet........will give it a look! Thanks